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Uh oh - Is my new hive about to swarm??

Sorry for the blurry pic ... it was a bit awkard trying to take this with my iPhone.

I did a very quick inspection today, and I found something completely unexpected. All I wanted to do was see how they were progressing with the 3rd medium brood box I added a week ago ... and I see what looks like swarm cells to me (these are on the bottom of a frame in the top box). This is a brand new hive from a package ... on previously undrawn foundation. I really wasn't expecting to have to deal with swarming until next year, but it looks like that's not the case!

I'm pretty sure they haven't already swarmed as the numbers look quite high to me (certainly more than last inspection).

So, a few questions:

1) Are those indeed swarm cells? (It looks like i managed to "uncap" one when removing the frame and the larvae is shown in the middle of the photo in one of the cells)

2) How much time do I have before the actually swarm?

3) I'm a newbie, so what's the recommended split method? I'd like to just do a basic cut-down split or something, but not sure how to do that with 3 mediums all containing brood. Do I need to go and look for the queen instead?

I'm not great at seeing eggs, but I definitely saw very small larvae ... all sizes of larvae actually (very tiny to larger). argh!

Re: Uh oh - Is my new hive about to swarm??

The single thing at the top of the picture is a queen cup, not a swarm cell, at least not yet. Can you see an egg in it?

Queen cups are natural and not, by themselves, indicative of a swarm. Of course if you see a lot of them (like more than 10) then they could be the precursors to getting swarm cells filled and capped. From the angle of the picture it's hard to tell if there is a slew of queen cups, or just a lot of lumpy burr comb.

Is your hive crowded for brood laying space or nectar storage space? Do you have some empty frames to add to the sides of the brood nest areas so you might have something like this: brood frames >inserted new frame > honey frame at the outside edges? This is the minimalist iteration of an anti-swarm technique known as "opening the brood nest", sometimes it's mistakenly described as checkerboarding, which is a different tactic. Bees don't like their brood nests monkeyed with, especially when it is still cool. But in my single Spring's experience (evaluate what I say based on that fact) they don't get pissed when a empty frame is inserted on the outer edges of their brood nest. Instead they get busy drawing it so the queen can lay there, too. Keeps their minds off swarming, supposedly. YMMV, of course.

If you do a cut-down, you'll need a fourth box (plus base, top, etc. for the second hive) and enough frames to fill it up. You would divide the bees, frames of open, mixed and capped brood and nectar, pollen and capped honey, making sure that each box has eggs or very tiny larva to cook up their own queen if left without the queen. The extra frames of the fourth box would be divvied up as well, being salted at the outsides of the other boxes, as appropriate. A cut-down is very disruptive to the bees and won't keep them from making more queen cups, nor I think, is it guaranteed to prevent swarming if they are already far along that path.

Adding more space to lay eggs (the empty frames inserted as described above) and store nectar (more super space) might do the trick. Good luck.

Re: Uh oh - Is my new hive about to swarm??

I couldn't see an egg in the cup, but I'm pretty sure the other cluster of cells are elongated queen cells ... they sure don't look like screwy burr comb to me, anyway! Anyone else care to offer an opinion?

They have plenty of space, so I'm not sure why they would be considering swarming already ... unless it's just a characteristic of this queen?

I'm half wondering if maybe they started feeling crowded before I added the 3rd box ... and thought about swarming. Now that they have the 3rd box with plenty of room, maybe I should cut out those swarm cells? I'm at a bit of a loss what to do here!

Re: Uh oh - Is my new hive about to swarm??

Thanks NewbeeInNH.

I got feedback from Michael Bush the those aren't actually necessarily swarm cells - but just funky drone cells (and one empty queen cup). They have plenty of room actually - at least 5 empty frames in the top box, so that shouldn't be a problem. I might just leave well enough alone at this point and keep my fingers crossed.